Mondale Hailed As Labor`s Hero

Afl-cio Has No Regrets For Backing Him In `84

February 19, 1985|By James Warren, Chicago Tribune.

BAL HARBOUR, FLA. — America`s top labor leaders Monday gave what amounted to a hero`s welcome to former Vice President Walter Mondale and showed themselves to be proudly unrepentant about their involvement in his disastrous presidential campaign.

The AFL-CIO executive council opened its winter meeting by vividly recalling a controversial move, the endorsement of Mondale before the first Democratic primary. The early endorsement was seen by some as a drawback for Mondale during the general campaign, when he faced charges of being too beholden to ``special interests.``

Mondale, a Washington partner in the Chicago law firm of Winston & Strawn, was met by a standing ovation as he entered a meeting of the 35-member council. He made his way around a large four-sided table and greeted each leader of the 13.7-million member federation.

Doors were then closed as he spent 80 minutes discussing his battle against President Reagan and expressing gratitude for labor`s support, which was critical to gaining his party`s nomination, although far less helpful against in he campaign against Reagan.

After the session, AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland avoided any suggestion that labor support hurt Mondale, and some council members said the issue wasn`t even broached in the unusually long session. Mondale was whisked in and out of the meeting and did not talk to reporters.

Kirkland said Mondale was largely a victim of a protracted primary process within the Democratic Party, in which candidates were ``tearing one another apart,`` and of an inability to master the ``vital force in public-opinion forming these days,`` television.

Again and again, top unionists here kept speaking of Mondale`s loss as a failure in ``marketing.``

Skeptics found the visit, the result of an AFL-CIO invitation, symbolic of labor`s inability to jettison outdated political tactics and alliances, which some say have defeated their own purpose. The courtly and acerbic Kirkland, however, would have nothing of that notion, saying that he likes winning but that ``it`s more important to stand for something.``

Asked about the epithet characterizing labor as a ``special interest,``

Kirkland responded that ``we are not going to run from these mindless, knee-jerk phrases.``

Mondale, he said, ``was proud of that label (friend of labor) . . . and he wore it proudly. We supported Fritz Mondale because we agreed with what he stood for. I would so the same again.``

Kirkland produced a copy of a 1974 Atlantic Monthly article, a postmortem of George McGovern`s 1972 defeat at the hands of President Richard Nixon. The article, by the Washington Post`s David Broder, claimed that a ``divided``

labor movement made a mistake that year by not endorsing a candidate earlier.